A question of competence: George W. Bush has failed in some basics

National Review, April 2, 2007 by Richard Lowry

POLITICAL commentators are scrambling to explain the extraordinary rise of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 GOP nomination contest. The conventional explanation is that, buoyed by his 9/11 heroism and accomplishments as mayor, he is riding a wave among Republican voters relatively unburdened by knowledge of his chaotic personal life and liberal social views. This is certainly true. But the Giuliani wave has been lent extra force by another factor shaping the political environment: the Bush administration's increasing association with executive dysfunction.

The administration's stumbles have created an implicit "competence primary" in the Republican race, one in which Giuliani--with his success running the fourth-largest government in the country--is particularly suited to thrive. The importance of this aspect of the race is another early drag on the candidacy of Arizona senator John McCain, who is: the only major Republican candidate currently in Washington, D.C.--as always, the focus of disgust with the federal government; the only major candidate without any executive experience whatsoever; and the major candidate--ironically enough--most closely associated with George W. Bush.

That "competence" would become a buzzword, not of Bush supporters but of his critics, is an unexpected turnabout from when he entered office six years ago. Then, it was common to note the experience and gravitas of the Bush team. They were the "adults" who would run Washington efficiently after the drama and dithering of the Clinton years. Bush was the first MBA and CEO president, who would rely on his management skills to harness the abilities of the heavyweights around him.

Instead, the incompetence charge has gained such traction that even many Republicans buy it. Some of Bush's strengths as a political leader, particularly his loyalty and optimism, have proven to have a double edge when it comes to running the government. He has made a few key bad decisions about policy and personnel, compounded them by not reacting quickly enough when things began to go wrong, and failed to create a sense of accountability in his government. He has seemed to have a much stronger sense of ends than means, and neglected the relation between the two.

The upshot is that even Republican primary voters will be looking in 2008 for someone who doesn't run the government like George W. Bush.

It must be said that running a $3 trillion government is too big a job for anyone. There is too much going on for any one person to control or manage it flawlessly, and in no circumstance will the federal government be a model of efficiency. Bush has been hurt particularly by two massive events that might have been beyond the managing of the most talented executive--a hurricane that devastated an area larger than Great Britain in the Gulf Coast and the "ungrateful volcano" of Iraq. But both still tell heavily against his administrative record.

Bush has certainly had successes. The prescription-drug program is, for better or worse, one of his most important domestic initiatives. Its design was hideously complex and its implementation a gargantuan bureaucratic task. Initial stumbles led Democrats and the press to lump it into a narrative of Bush incompetence. It was a high-profile example in an Alan Wolfe essay in The Washington Monthly titled "Why Conservatives Can't Govern." But the program has turned out to be popular, relatively well run, and less expensive then expected.

Alas, there are also plenty of lowlights. If they were to be turned into a trashy TV documentary, it would be billed, "When bureaucracy goes bad": the CIA and FBI prior to 9/11 (the infamous failure to "connect the dots"); the CIA again in the run-up to the Iraq War (the over-interpretation of dated, incomplete intelligence); the State Department and the Pentagon in the planning for the post-combat phase of the Iraq War (no unified plan); FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the recovery since (at first overwhelmed and then simply inefficient); the Pentagon, again, in the equipping of U.S. troops and the reaction to the growing insurgency in Iraq (too slow); the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States in the handling of the Dubai ports deal (ham-handed); the Justice Department's handling of the firing of U.S. attorneys (also ham-handed); the Army and VA in the Walter Reed scandal (plodding and unresponsive); the FBI, again, in the matter of national-security letters (inexcusably sloppy).

'GOOD MAN'

Bush's management problems begin with the way he evaluates and values people. Bush has a bad case of the "good man syndrome." That is the tendency, on the slender evidence of a personal encounter or two, to pronounce someone a "good man," on whom a geopolitical relationship can be based or major responsibilities placed. Personal relationships are important to all politicians, and all will rely to some extent or another on their gut instincts about people. But with Bush, it is particularly so.